newKnow

Ok. I'm laughing now. Do your flight attendants drink? Serious. What is their policy? 8 hours? 12 hours? Or, are you even allowed to go out with them? Maybe that hotel rumor is true.

buzzpat

Hey New, I don't think many DAL-S pilots know what the FA rule is because we hardly ever lay over with them. Its not a rumor, its true for domestic trips. Every once in a while, we'll get a joint layover. 95% of the time, the pilots go one way and the FA's go another. Its been that way for quite awhile. And when you do share a layover, there's a lot of "boom clicking." Like I said, every once in a while the crews are staying at the same hotel and will go out. I just had one of those and we had a blast. That's pretty rare, though.

acl65pilot

As per the FAA if you were tested with a .02 or less it is a null test. Anything over and you will have a little visit from a few of the DPAC, or NASAP peeps.
No tolerance here. On top of that if you suspect someone, accuse them and are wrong, it is no fault. DAL's stance is better safe than sorry.

newKnow

So the hotel rumor is true!!

And no one knows what the FA rule is....

That's kind of funny......and sad.

On the DC-9 we keep the same FA's for the whole trip. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes thats bad.

buzzpat

HeHe...sometimes good, sometimes bad. Most of the time, we don't know.

acl65pilot

Yep. We normally are lucky to have FA's for two legs in a row. Sometimes like in LAS they do go to the hotel with us, but more times than not, we go to the long layover hotel and they go to the short one.

sailingfun

The hotels used are generally the same in each city. The flight attendants however have different work rules and their rotations are constructed differently. If you both arrive at a layover city and have a long layover you normally will go to the same hotel with a few exceptions. If you both have a short layover you will also go to the same hotel. What happens often on a domestic trip is that the layovers are short/long or long/short and you go to different hotels or you get off the aircraft to layover and the flight attendants continue on or vice versa.
In building flight attendant rotations the company caters to the senior flight attendants. They have some off the best trips in the industry. Sadly building great trips like 10 hour turns for the senior flight attendants really degrades the rotations for the junior flight attendants. There is also a Atlanta mafia for flight attendants. They often get the best deals. As a example we fly JFK-DKR-CPT with NY flight attendants. The Atlanta flight attendants were flying ATL-DKR-JNB. Joberg is not nearly as nice a layover as Capetown so the Atlanta flight attendants *****ed and we now swap flight attendants in DKR so the Atlanta flight attendants can have the nice Capetown layover and the JFK flight attendants go to Joberg. This in spite of the fact that the equipment is also different and creates issues with having to swap around the extra flight attendant to keep the manning correct.
On all international trips we layover with the flight attendants except a few cities where the number of crews laying over requires two hotels. Rome in the summer is a example. You may or may not go to the same hotel in that situation.

sevenfiveseven

Any word on the AFA voting at the combined DAL? The DAL-S are in for a HUGE eye opener if they proceed to collective bargaining...

johnso29

Same way on the A320. We usually only have them for 1-2 legs.

Superpilot92

does it really matter? arent most of them in their 50's and 60's anyway?